A handsome leaf from a North Italian processional, from the Office of the Dead (the initial opening a responsory ‘Credo quod redemptor…’), beautifully illuminated in exquisite detail by a highly skilled artist working in the style of Paduan-born illuminator Benedetto Bordone (fl.1488-1530).
The striking initial is highly unusual, the skull and bones painted almost spectrally. The artist uses grisaille here to great effect, particularly in contrast to the bright magenta grounds of the border cartouches, and the green of the opening initial; their finesse is further shown in the delightful vignette of the standing figure, with the delicate and skilful handling of his robes, highlighted in white. The same border arrangement and illumination style can be found in a fragment of 29 leaves from a Processional, part of the Hofer Collection at Houghton Library, Harvard, MS Typ 310 (digitised and online via Hollis; see Roger S. Wieck, Late Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts, 1983, 131 and pl.52). In particular f.11 of the Hofer manuscript corresponds to the present leaf, also with the opening initial containing a skull and bones - slightly differently arranged - and with historiated cartouches at top and bottom, though not executed in the same detail, and using a different colour palette.
Bordone was an illuminator, printmaker, scholar and writer, first recorded in a document of his marriage in 1480 - described there as miniator, miniaturist - who moved to Venice in 1492. ‘To historians of art, Bordon is recognised as the most prominent miniaturist active in Venice around 1500, responsible for the dominant style of book illumination there from the mid-1490s to the 1520s’ (Armstrong, p.65). Along with manuscripts, he also illuminated printed books, including those from the Aldine press; ‘at least seven Aldine octavos [copies of the Petrarch, Martial, Juvenal and Vergil editions] contain miniatures attributable to Bordon, several with coats of arms of powerful Venetian families’ (Armstrong, p.68).
Provenance: Sotheby’s 29 June 2007, lot 15; Bloomsbury Book Auctions, 6 July 2016, lot 86.
L. Armstrong, ‘Benedetto Bordon, “Miniator’, and Cartography in Early Sixteenth-Century Venice’, Imago Mundi 48 (1996), pp.65-92.
